The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts by David Wake Page B

have them forwarded somewhere else. This meant he’d been living somewhere else, but he’d not mentioned anything like that at the theatre, when they’d seen the brass band and that funny sketch about the French Foreign Legion that now seemed so silly in comparison to consulting detective work.
    She had another macaroon.
    Missing book, stupid factories in Battersea and Birmingham, both places that begin with ‘B’, packed quickly, gone… west. He’d left his scarf, so perhaps Africa or India, rather than Canada or the Outer Hebrides. He hadn’t been arrested, because they were looking for him.
    There were no more macaroons.
    Oh, it was impossible.

Chapter VI
    Miss Deering-Dolittle
    Earnestine followed them.
    The Temporal Peeler, Chief Examiner Lombard, had left the way he had arrived, but Earnestine knew how to get to the ‘treasure house’ and thence through a yard and into the street, so, after some undignified running, she was close enough to catch sight of them getting into a four wheeler. As it moved away, fortune smiled on her as a hansom cab came round the corner.
    “Follow that carriage,” she said, climbing up.
    Now they approached Battersea or perhaps further north–east into Vauxhall or Lambeth. She wasn’t sure about this side of the river.
    The driver was holding back as instructed and Earnestine was trying not to bob up to see over the horse’s rump every five minutes.
    The trap door above her opened, and she looked up and back at the driver.
    “They’re stopping, Miss,” he said.
    “Thank you, stop here please.”
    The horse snorted loudly as the driver pulled back on the reins. Earnestine opened the doors in front and stepped down from the two–wheeler.
    “Here,” she said, paying. “Wait.”
    “Right you are, Miss.”
    As she stepped away, she had a sudden panic that she’d paid with the strange King Edward sovereign, but it was still there in her carpet bag, along with the flat iron and the poker. She inwardly cursed herself for not bringing any of the Duelling Machine’s weaponry.
    She was at a factory, she thought, although she wasn’t that familiar with such premises.
    She ran to the entrance, a wrought iron gate between two strong brick pillars with an iron arch between them, and peeked round the corner.
    The dark suited men in their top hats and white glasses were bundling Boothroyd from the carriage and into a goods yard. A smart woman dressed in burgundy appeared and the men snapped to attention. They were talking, too far away for Earnestine to make out any words, and then one of the men pointed at the gate. Earnestine ducked away.
    When she looked back, they were all going inside.
    When the way was clear, Earnestine sprinted across the cobbles and hunkered down in front of the door. Although it had been her plan, now she was near the entrance, she didn’t fancy following them inside. There’d be nowhere to run if she was discovered, so she went around the side of the building – gosh, it went a long way back – keeping low, and craning her neck into each window to check. By the time she’d reached the third, she saw them – just.
    She searched round for something to stand on and found a barrel covered in a black powdery substance that left a soot mark on her fingers. She tilted it on its rim to semi–roll it up against the wall. When she clambered on top, she could just see through the dirty window.
    At the end of a long room, the Temporal Peelers and that woman in the long evening dress had gathered on a platform with the Peelers holding the forlorn and dejected form of Boothroyd between them.
    They stood in formation, holding their sword scabbards flat against them, almost as if they were posing for a daguerreotype.
    All of a sudden, and in unison, they checked their pocket watches: it was a bizarre, almost choreographed, action.
    A noise, a galvanic fizzing or a bagpipe drone with a rising tone, ululated, and a light pulsed brightly within.
    And then… and